Journal

They say people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. You learn from each other, lean into one another. Sometimes you even decide to do life together. And everything is magical. Until it isn't. And things get hard.

I had heard of this place before. A distant cousin to the chaos that was Cairo, related but nothing alike. The photos I had seen were of clear, blue waters and golden light stretching out over wild, open spaces.

Our cab driver, Hani, looked like George Clooney. He lit a cigarette, asked for 25JD up front, and came to a stop on the side of the road before ushering us into an unmarked car. There was a lot of hand waving and what seemed like friendly arabic, some money changing and then he left us. Damn him, he left us.

The intricate design and high vaulted corridors of twisted rock had me convinced Petra was some sort of elaborate modern hoax. A fantasy world brought to fruition. It wasn’t until I had wandered the city streets myself that I began to process Petra as a reality; plainly panorama before me.

Few places compare to the Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah. The sheer size and gravity of nature at its best. The innate sense of freedom; the euphoria of standing still amid a waste of wild air. Wadi Rum is one of those places.

It was cool enough to wear a sweater, and the sun was setting when we found a hilltop spot to sit and stare out at the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights and Yarmuk Gorge. The ruins of Umm Qais (Gadara) were at our back, Israel to the left and Syria to the right.

I woke up on the seventeenth floor, suspended above a city beneath an overcast sky; misty roads winding through stacks on stacks of white stone structures. When you live for months at a time in a place void of rain, mist, and cloud; moody mornings are more like million dollar moments.

In Bahrain you drive on sidewalks and park where you like. You hear English so often you forget you're in the Middle East; you hire tailors to craft the designer stuff you see while sipping mango juice and paging though fashion magazines.